I’ve listened to it front to back and I can honestly say this is the best podcast I’ve made in the last five months. Truth be told, I know there are plenty of people who do podcasts as their primary outlet, talk on them and whatnot (hey, I tried it once and reserve the right to do it again at some point), but if it’s between crossfading feedback from one song to another and writing a review of a new record, well, crossfading falls into the same category as just about everything else: Write first.

Fortunately, a longer span of time between casts makes it that much easier to pick tracks. Existence does not hand you a 45-minute Øresund Space Collective jam every day, so I thought that was worth featuring, and I just got Megaritual’s new vinyl for review, so I thought featuring their more recent single-song EP would work well too.

I’m happy with the blend overall, and with Asteroid setting the tone. Be patient with it. Let it unfold. Even with a rocking start, it gets pretty psychedelic pretty quickly, and only continues to move further out. My advice is go with it and see where you end up.

In my defense, I’ll say it’s been a really hectic couple months. Truth be told, even I think it’s been a really long time since the last podcast, so if you do too, at very least we agree on it. If the tradeoff for that is getting to use a bunch of new tracks, some of which have been featured around here for streaming — like Foghound, Monkey3, Slomatics, Comet Control, Mindkult, New Planet Trampoline, etc. — and some of which haven’t shown up around this site yet — Besvärjelsen, Monolord, King Buffalo, Fungal Abyss, Landing, etc. — then I think it’s a decent tradeoff to make. Listening back to it now that it’s finished, as is my tradition, I dig it.

And of course I hope you dig it as well. We start at full run with Foghound and add some boogie to the mix with Långfinger before crashing into the wall of riffs that is Monolord and digging into the garage swing of Mindkult, so right off the bat there’s a decent amount of ground covered, and it only gets weirder as it moves forward, but hopefully even more immersive as well. The second hour, and really from New Planet Trampoline on, keep an open mind and try to just go where the sounds go. It should be a satisfying trip either way.

Given my druthers, I’d have had this up more than a week ago, but there was a bit of a crunch last week as you may have seen, so here we are. Better late than something something. The important thing is here’s about two hours’ worth of new music from psych to drone to sludge and if I do say so myself, it’s a pretty good mix of all of it. The first hour gets pretty driving by the time you get down to Gozu and Domadora before the big chill out with New Planet Trampoline, and though I’m always happy to include audio from improv specialists Øresund Space Collective, their “Ode to a Black Hole Pt. 1” might be their most tripped-out affair yet. Darker for sure, but way, way gone.

As always, the theme is simple — new music — and the goal is perhaps you’ll hear something you didn’t know before. The impact of Elephant Tree’s “Aphotic Blues” forced itself into the playlist, and I’ve been digging the hell out of new Goya, Telstar Sound Drone and Gozu releases, so they had to be here too. I hear some Floor in Spotlights, but there’s more to them than just that, which I think you can hear in “The Grower,” and that’s really just the start of what gets to be pretty expansive by the time it’s finished. Hope you enjoy.

I wanted this podcast to sound good in headphones, since in all likelihood that’s how I’ll be listening to it. That and keeping it under two hours long were my only standards, everything else was open. What we wound up with was some pretty massive tonality, and where it’s not massive, it’s at very least immersive. A lot of longer-form material. Maybe that’s me making up for missing last month in terms of putting one of these together, but either way, there’s a lot to dig into here, and it’s my hope you’ll do just that.

Some things to watch for: Causa Sui into Atavismo at the start is awesome. Also dig Seedship into Low Flying Hawks into Crippled Black Phoenix. There’s some real density going on during that stretch and I don’t want to say it’s my favorite part of the thing, because I also did the jumps in the middle and the second hour that gets darker as it goes, but it’s pretty solid either way. And by solid I mean fluid. Got it? Solid.

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Before we get to all the tracks and this and that, I have to say, this double-size year-end podcast was an absolute pleasure to put together. Fun. Actual fun. I don’t know if it was the preponderance of excellent songs to work from that came out in 2015 or what, but I had a really good time making my way through the near-four-hour run, and I hope you feel that way too as you listen.

It should go without mentioning, but I’ll give the disclaimer anyway that this is in no way, shape or form a complete rundown of everything awesome produced this year. My own Top 10 has bands on it who aren’t represented here, so if you don’t see something you think belongs in the mix below — looking at you, Baroness fans — please keep in mind that it’s not my intent to offer anything more than a partial summary. Otherwise, I’d have to make it a year long.

Thanks for listening if you get the chance to do so, and if there’s something here you haven’t yet checked out, I hope you dig it. The flow is pretty easy front to back, but we get into some more extreme stuff in the third hour for a bit before going grand with Elder and the “Digestive Raga” from Øresund Space Collective, which seemed an appropriate way to end off giving everyone a chance to process what’s just been heard. Please enjoy.

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I put up a podcast last year on the day before Thanksgiving as well. At least I’m consistent. In the US, today is the biggest travel day of the year, and I continue to feel like there are few things better in this universe than hitting the road accompanied by good music. Whether you’re driving alone on your way to see family for the holiday, commuting to work (that one doesn’t necessarily have to be by car, I suppose), going to stand on line for some silly discount item or whatever it might be, I hope you find something here you consider worth bringing along for the trip.

The holidays are always a pretty stressful time — when isn’t? — so once it gets past the initial burst of heft from Tombstones, this one stays pretty mellow for the most part. Deville and Kind rock pretty hard, but once it moves into the Dirty Streets and Old Man Lizard and so on, it’s more nod than headbang, which is accurate to where my brain is at. Looking for something chill in the face of miles to cover and meals to consume. If you’re in the US, a very Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, and if not, I hope you enjoy just the same.

Track details follow:

First Hour:
0:00:00 Isaak, “Fountainhead” from Sermonize
0:03:58 Tombstones, “Pyre of the Cloth” from Vargariis
0:13:30 Hound, “Over the Edge,” from Out of Space
0:17:44 Deville, “Mind on Hold” from Make it Belong to Us
0:21:17 Kind, “German for Lucy” from Rocket Science
0:28:26 Dirty Streets, “Save Me” from White Horse
0:31:55 Old Man Lizard, “Craniopagus Paraciticus” from Old Man Lizard
0:40:43 Across Tundras, “No Roads in any Direction” from Home Free
0:46:52 Niche, “On Down the Line” from Heading East
0:52:11 Wired Mind, “Road” from Mindstate: Dreamscape

Second Hour:
1:03:07 Seedy Jeezus, “Echoes in the Sky” from Echoes in the Sky
1:19:03 Dorre, “One Collapsed at the Altar” from One Collapsed at the Altar

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Yeah, it hasn’t been that long since the last podcast, I know, but my thinking on it was like this: Doesn’t matter. First off, not like anybody’s keeping tabs to see how long it’s been between one and the next. Second, I had the time to do it and I never really know these days when that’s going to happen, so I figured better to take advantage while I could. Third, screw it, it’s music. Who’s gonna complain?

I won’t say I never know what to expect when I put a podcast together like this, but sometimes these things take unexpected turns, and that definitely happened this time. Things got pretty heavy, pretty quickly, and while there are a couple sharp cuts between sounds, I kind of wanted to make that happen to offset how far things got. Noisy, thrashy, doomy, and that’s really all in the first hour, because in the second, it’s pretty much all space. I very much enjoy the second-hour-is-psych-as-hell thing, and I gotta say, this might be the best one I’ve arranged. I’m willing to wager that as you make your way through you won’t be able to tell where one song ends and the next one starts without looking at the time stamps below. Obviously, that’s the whole idea.

Enjoy:

First Hour:
0:00:00 Gentlemans Pistols, “Time Wasters” from Hustler’s Row
0:05:46 Irata, “March by Tens” from Sweet Loris
0:10:25 Skraeckoedlan, “Gigantos” from Sagor
0:17:47 Tombstones, “Barren Fields” from Vargariis
0:27:05 With the Dead, “Crown of Burning Stars” from With the Dead
0:33:23 All Them Witches, “Open Passageways” from Dying Surfer Meets His Maker
0:36:35 Vhöl, “Red Chaos” from Deeper than Sky
0:41:37 Saviours, “Hell’s Floor” from Palace of Vision
0:45:49 Jess and the Ancient Ones, “In Levitating Secret Dreams” from Second Psychedelic Coming: The Aquarius Tapes
0:49:01 King Dead, “The Firmament of Heaven Opened, and the Flood Waters Were upon Them,” from Woe and Judgment
0:57:35 Dave Heumann, “Switchback” from Here in the Deep

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Whenever the hell it was that I started really doing podcasts again on a roughly-monthly basis, I said that there would be no theme from one to the other. That’s a rule I’ve bent a couple times since, and this is one of those instances as well. This podcast takes a look at the rather extensive lineup for Desertfest Belgium 2015 (posted in full here). It was a particular challenge to keep it to what’s become the standard two-hour format, but in the end, I think the tracklisting below brings together the headliners and some of the lesser known bands in a way that speaks to the breadth of the festival itself. Or at least I hope it does. It’s a killer mix, either way.

Worth noting that this is the second podcast this year that has started with Goatsnake. That is not an accident. I tried to keep things as current as possible here, and their new one destroys. I think the only cuts not from the band’s latest album are Bongzilla, Monomyth and Monolord, and well, the songs included speak for themselves either way.

Desertfest Belgium 2015 happens this weekend at Trix in Antwerpen. If, like me, you won’t be there, hope this provides a bit of fodder escapist daydreaming. If you’re going, it’s never to early to get psyched on it. Either way, please enjoy: